Paul Rock

Constructing victims' rights: the Home Office, New Labour and victims

PREFACE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1. Prelude: Crime and Victims at the Turn of the Century 2. The Home Office at the Turn of the Century 3. Committees 4. The Victim as Consumer 5. The Victim and Human Rights 6. The Victim and Compensation 7. The Victim and Reparation 8. The Vulnerable or Intimidated Victim 9. The Victim and Race 10. Consummation 11. Conclusion INDEX

Helping victims of crime : the Home Office and the rise of victim support in England and Wales

Prologue - the criminal justice system and the still centre criminal injuries compensation, 1951-1964 the Victims-Offenders group and the National Victims Association, 1968-1976 the Bristol Victims Support Scheme, 1970-1975 the birth of the National Association of Victims Support Schemes, 1975-1980 the growth of the NAVSS, 1979-1986 back to the centre - the Home Office and Victims, 1970-1984 consummation, 1982-1986 summary and conclusions.

The Social World of an English Crown Court: Witnesses and Professionals in the Crown Court Centre at Wood Green.

Introduction: the setting - the Crown Court at Wood Green. Part 1 Defining the witness: trials as conflict trials and anomie trials as practical work insiders and outsiders space time in the court. Part 2 Supporting the witness: the politics of the witness the project.

Phenomenalism and Essentialism in the Sociology of Deviancy

The sociology of deviancy is emerging as a distinctive perspective on problems of rule-breaking and social control. Among its integral features is an antipathy towards the systematisation of its ideas. This antipathy has allowed the developing perspective to maintain contradictory positions on important issues. In particular, there is a contradiction between the sociologys phenomenalism, which stresses the need to faithfully reproduce the social world as it is known by its inhabitants, and its essentialism which searches for the underlying properties of social order. A limited solution to this discrepancy is offered in the form of the suggestion that sociologists of deviancy should focus their attention on the ideas of social structure which are held by the people whose behaviour they describe. Sociological maps of these ideas would permit the perspective to manage some of the issues that currently cause confusion.

Rules, boundaries and the courts : some problems in the neo-Durkheimian sociology of deviance

This paper examines a very simple theme in sociology. It is so simple that it has tended either to be accepted or neglected but very rarely, it seems, critically reviewed. The sociology of crime and deviance concentrates on the problematics of ruling, rule-enforcement and rule-observance, and one of the neo-Durkheimian tenets held by many of its practitioners is that rules are reinforced and revealed in the boundary-defining work of institutions of social control, and in the work of the law courts above all. It is that tenet which is discussed here, principally by examining its empirical claims. It appears that little or no good empirical evidence is available to support the thesis, and that there are major methodological obstacles to its production.

Aftermath and the Construction of Victimisation: ‘The Other Victims of Crime’

Aftermath, a self-help and counselling organisation established by and for the families of serious offenders, defines its members as ‘he other victims of crime’. That is a claim which raises important and interesting questions not only about procedures for establishing moral identity but also about the reach and impact of crime.

The public faces of public criminology

There have recently been a number of calls for a public criminology – although the term is ill-defined – as if such a criminology were quite new. A vigorous public criminology did indeed once exist in England and Wales but it presented problems to the politician, policy-maker and scholar, and it became largely forgotten. If a public criminology is to re-emerge, it must contend with a spate of presentational difficulties which appear to have been too little considered.

Victims, prosecutors and the state in nineteenth century England and Wales

Despite substantial misgivings about the activities and character of private prosecutors in England and Wales, the office of Director of Public Prosecutions was established only reluctantly and hesitantly in 1879. Tracing the history and aftermath of the decision to create that office reveals something of the manner in which victims and the state were represented officially throughout much of the nineteenth century, and it may help to explain why there is such a continuing reluctance to cede the victim a greater role in criminal procedure.

A history of British criminology

Foreword. British criminology before 1935 Hermann Mannheim British criminology - 1935-1948 the development of criminology in Britain - 1948-1960 British criminology - 1960-1987 the present state of British criminology methodological developments psychological contributions to criminology feminism and criminology in Britain criminal justice and the criminal process the history of crime British criminology and the state British criminology and Marxism.

Aspects of the Social Construction of Crime Victims in Australia

Abstract Representations of victims embody the distinctive practices of organizations in and around criminal justice systems. In Australia, the origins of victims’ services are chiefly to be found in the activities of groups established to assist the families of homicide victims and the women victims of domestic violence and rape. The images of victimization engendered by those groups place a heavy emphasis on trauma, and the appropriate response is held to be counseling offered by specially trained practitioners. The outcome has been that the victims of volume crime such as theft, burglary, and malicious damage have been somewhat overlooked, blotted out, and left without substantial relief. To underscore the mediated nature of those representations, I shall conclude by describing a very different set of representations and attendant practices to be found in England and Wales, where victims are generally portrayed as those who have been affected by volume crime, and where services are provided by volunteers deemed not to require expert training in therapeutic support. The outcome should illuminate how very contingent are the policies, politics, and images of victimization.